Lluc Baños

Lluc Baños - Untitled

Technique: Welded iron

Artist Biography: Lluc Baños is a contemporary Catalan artist born in 1983 in Terrassa, Barcelona. He graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and has exhibited his work in several solo and group exhibitions both in Spain and abroad.Baños works mainly with painting, exploring the relationship between abstraction and figuration. His style is characterized by the combination of loose and fluid strokes with geometric shapes and precise lines. Through his works, Baños questions the viewer's perception and reality, creating an enigmatic and evocative atmosphere.In terms of awards, in 2015 Baños received the National Painting Award from the Vila Casas Foundation. In addition, he has been selected for numerous exhibitions and art competitions, such as the Focus-Abengoa Painting Prize in 2011 and the Muestra de Arte Joven in 2008.Lluc Baños is an emerging and promising artist on the Spanish contemporary art scene, whose work has been highlighted by critics for his ability to combine abstraction and figuration in a unique and personal style.

 

Lluc Baños proposes that we continue together a conversation that began months ago. A debate not exclusively between him and me, but between a larger group of which we were both part, and which took as its starting point a question with which the writer Richard Sennet began, in his essay The Craftsman, a chapter on something he called material consciousness. a question with which the writer Richard Sennet began, in his essay The Craftsman, a chapter on something he called material consciousness. Is our awareness of things independent of the things themselves? he asked, to later point out that if anything makes an object interesting, it is the field of its own consciousness - that of the craftsman in that case - and that all his efforts to achieve a work of art are not only a matter of the craftsman's own consciousness, but also of the craftsman's own consciousness. all his efforts to achieve good quality work depend on his curiosity about the material he has in his hands. Far removed from that space in which the first appreciations were produced, with which both Lluc and the other artists present This conversation now arises, as in the case of the exhibition it accompanies, is articulated out of necessity. Among the different types of artists, if there are any two alike, I've always been more interested in the persevering ones than those who try at all costs to feed the image of genius, those whose work seeks to appear to be the fruit of a state of grace. Lluc tells me some of the reasons that have led him in recent years to work on a couple of series of stone sculptures, and I can see that there is a lot of love for the craft, but also a lot of dedication to a routine. So I understand that his way of working is halfway between the figure of the artist and that of the craftsman, not the artist who uses the specialised hand of the craftsman, but the artist who on many levels functions like the craftsman. This is why he does not disavow the decisions that have to be taken by the artist Lluc, nor does he avoid speaking or operating at times in the way the other Lluc does, the one who comes to the workshop as the stonemason who carves ornaments does, and operates to a large extent as the stonemason would. That is to say, on the basis of a knowledge of the technique, and on the basis of a desire to surpass it, but of course avoiding falling into empty flourishes. Regarding some small sculptures that Lluc made from the birdseed of a bird that had escaped, he comments: "I was interested above all in that symbolic character of the material, the birdseed as the food of that which rises." I have had this sentence in front of me for weeks, and only now have I understood that it defines in a resounding way what Lluc Baños is looking for. Ángel Calvo Ulloa